How to log something in Rails in an independent log file?

Question

In rails I want to log some information in a different log file and not the standard development.log or production.log. I want to do this logging from a model class.

Answer 1

A decent option that works for me is to just add a fairly plain class to your app/models folder such as app/models/my_log.rb

class MyLog
  def self.debug(message=nil)
    @my_log ||= Logger.new("#{Rails.root}/log/my.log")
    @my_log.debug(message) unless message.nil?
  end
end

then in your controller, or really almost anywhere that you could reference a model's class from within your rails app, i.e. anywhere you could do Post.create(:title => "Hello world", :contents => "Lorum ipsum"); or something similar you can log to your custom file like this

MyLog.debug "Hello world"